The Bisons baseball team hung tough over the weekend, but were ultimately swept by perennial DII power Delta State University (DSU) on Feb. 6-7, in Cleveland, Mississippi.
Head coach Patrick McGaha said that despite the losses, there were still positives to take away from playing close with a team of that caliber.
“We ran into a really good club,” McGaha said. “They’re a top-25 team and really back to the Delta (DSU) of old. They had solid hitters one through nine, their pitching was good—they’ll probably win the Gulf South Conference this year. So I think the message for us was that on the road, in a tough environment, against a team like that, we had a chance to win two of them.”
The Bisons took a 2-1 lead in the fourth inning of game one on a single from freshman infielder Blake Coward that scored senior catcher Davis Richardson and sophomore first baseman Grant Guest. But in the bottom of the inning, DSU responded with four runs of their own and then tacked on three more in the bottom of the fifth to pave the way to an 11-5 victory.
Games two and three were both decided by a single run. Game two was a defensive battle after the Statesmen struck with a two-run homerun in the first inning to take a 2-0 lead. The Bisons got one run back in the third inning and stayed in the game behind strong pitching from senior Hunter Payne, but ultimately fell 2-1. In game three, the Bisons carried a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning, but the Statesmen scored two runs to steal the game and the series sweep.
Senior centerfielder Harrison Hunter said that, while losing is never what the team hopes for, it knows it is not far from where it wants to be after its first two series of the year.
“We didn’t get the results we wanted, but as a team, we realized that we can compete with anyone,” Hunter said. “Playing a top-10 team last week in St. Edwards and standing toe-to-toe with them and then going against Delta State (DSU) helped us believe. Losing two games by a run stinks, but we were right there. That’s a good sign of things to come headed into conference play.”
The Bisons, who now sit at 1-5 on the year, will get another chance for their first series win of 2016 this weekend at home against Oklahoma Panhandle State University (OPSU). McGaha said he is not discouraged by the slow start and he knows they have a long season ahead of them.
“My message to the guys was that we hit a rough spot last year, we looked up and we were 5-10 to start the season but kept battling, and at the end of the year had a chance to win the conference championship,” McGaha said. “We say all the time that baseball is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. For us it’s definitely not how we start, but it’s how we finish.”
Hunter agreed with McGaha and said that nothing has changed in the team’s approach to each game and their high expectations for themselves this year.
“We are still going to compete the way we need to compete to be successful, and we will continue to practice the way we need to practice to be successful,” Hunter said. “Anything else is just outside noise. Hopes are definitely still high. We have 40-something games left and plenty of opportunities to get to where we want to be come May.”
The Bisons start their series against OPSU today with a doubleheader at noon and 3 p.m. at Jerry Moore Field in Searcy, Arkansas.
